


The War Before

by abaddon (nothingbutfic)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, black humour, warfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-23 23:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12518936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingbutfic/pseuds/abaddon
Summary: You really don't tell the Dark Lord when he's gone around the flipping bend.





	The War Before

**Author's Note:**

> Written between OotP and HBP and as such, totally AU.

There was rain, and there was mud and lighting and thunder. The wind swept over the Yorkshire moors, gorse and heather rustling in its wake, and the heavens continued to open up above, and shower the ground below with heavy, hard dollops of rain.  
  
Draco Malfoy stood in the pissing rain and absently wished he could scratch himself. He was tired, itchy, wet - his robes were soaked right though! - and he felt like he had a chill coming on, and there wasn't any Mother around to wrap him up in blankets and let him snuggle up with a hot water bottle and a copy of Witch Weekly.  
  
...Not that he read such plebian trash, of course, but the pictures were pretty.  
  
Mother was somewhere. France probably, or maybe Tahiti, along with every other wizard who possessed more brain power than a small root vegetable, and who'd decided to get out of the country before the pissing contest between Harry 'The Boy With The Small Penis' Potter and Lord 'I Have No Penis At All' Voldemort came to its inevitable conclusion.  
  
Lord 'I Have No Penis At All' Voldemort. Oh dear Merlin, his intellectual wit and sparkling sensibilities were wasted on this kind of...moor.  
  
Draco did possess more brain power than several small root vegetable - a fact of which he was most proud - but like many young wizards and witches raised a certain way, Draco had joined the ranks of the Death Eaters with a inescapable belief in the righteousness of their cause and his own indefagability.  
  
That had died two years ago, in a firefight which left Blaise Zabini dead and sprawled across the pavement.  
  
Blaise had only been seventeen, like many Slytherins who'd abandoned school for something more nobler than education, trusting they could come back to it after they'd won. Well, it was two years later, and all Draco had to trust was the ranting of a complete loony and his own wand.  
  
Oh, and his own bravery, but Draco knew he was a coward. After all, he was one of the few left, one of the honoured few, and so his father had trusted him to this final task. 'Even if you fuck it up, you won't actually be fucking it up,' his father had told him smoothly, and Draco resisted the impulse to snarl, because it wasn't polite manners to bitch about the man who gave you pocket money.  
  
So now he stood in the rain on the plain that wasn't in Spain, and waited.  
  
Soon enough, and sure enough, he had company.  
  
"Ho, Malfoy!" Potter called, cheery and calm, eyes bright and seemingly not giving a toss about his own condition, wet and slimy from mud and grime. It was amazing what war did to the state of one's clothes, really.  
  
"Potter." Draco pulled his wand, raised it solemnly, and assumed the standard dueling pose.  
  
Potter sniggered. "Oh, don't try that, Malfoy. We both know I could take you with both hands behind my back if I wanted, you sneaky little twatmuncher." He almost seemed to be enjoying himself.  
  
"Don't take the piss!" Draco whined, utterly incensed. "I am going through the forms of a thousand years of culture for you, and you spit it back in my face! You always did! No respect for history, have you?"  
  
There was a shrug in response. "History's full of dead people. I knew enough of them to not want to be one. You never learned to live in the now, did you?"  
  
Draco ignored the question. It was a highly honed skill he had, denial. "And I am not a twatmuncher!"  
  
"Guess you must be a cocksucker then."  
  
"Oh!" Draco cursed and lashed out, palms of his hands catching Potter across the chest and pushed him back. "You are so...puerile!"  
  
"This from the man who made 'Potter Stinks' badges!" And Potter pushed him back.  
  
"This from the Hero who couldn't save us in second year without going down a toilet!" Draco.  
  
"This from the...Oh, just _shut up_." But Draco had the initiative, and pushed him again. Potter slid a bit on the sludge and almost lost his balance, arms cartwheeling like crazy for a few second, and now it was Draco's turn to snigger.  
  
"That's not bloody funny, Malfoy!" His face turned crimson as it always did when someone was showing him up, which was all too infrequently for Draco's taste.  
  
"Of course it is. Us battling for the fate of the wizarding world by having in a girly fight in the middle of the Yorkshire moors."  
  
"I am not a girl," Potter said very stiffly, and raised himself upright.  
  
"I've noticed."  
  
Potter grinned then. "Bet you have."  
  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"Well, you're an obsessive little ferret, aren't you?" And then all of a sudden his wand was out, and it was trained on Draco, and oh, fuck. "Always watching my every move." His grin turned rakish, even wicked, and Draco suddenly felt very afraid and very determined not to let it show. "I made sure you had plenty to watch."  
  
"You pissy little exhibitionist," Draco spat. "All that wanking in the showers was for me?"  
  
"Well, not just you, you voyeur. I have this whole fanclub thing, they send letters, it's all quite cool. Colin used to take pictures, you see." The wand didn't move an inch.  
  
"Ewww. Mudblood cooties."  
  
"You are _such_ a girly boy."  
  
"Just because someone uses moisturiser, the whole school gets it into his head that he's a girly boy." Draco sighed. "And so I am loved."  
  
"More like bitched about and mocked repeatedly."  
  
"No need to rub it in."  
  
"What are you doing here, anyway? There's so few of you left, I wouldn't think they'd send the likes of you out to defend the old and fungal one." He tried to circle around Draco, ever watchful, but Draco kept stepping in his way. "Your dad can't be that desperate, can he?"  
  
"My Father-" Draco pronounced the capitals in ringing tones "-knows exactly what he's doing."  
  
"Your father is a petty sociopath and a coward who should have been fed hemlock when they shoved him in Azkaban."  
  
Potter could be so crude sometimes. Especially when he knew he was right. Sigh.  
  
"You take that back!"  
  
"Or what, you'll _piss_ on me?"  
  
Draco snorted, and crossed his arms. "Still, it doesn't matter. Father knew the one thing I can do well."  
  
"Ahhh." Realisation dawned. It was good to see he wasn't completely dense. "You're a delaying tactic."  
  
"The Dark Lord is over that hill with his most dedicated followers, two pounds of desicated coconut and a wheelbarrow full of dead chickens, intent on carrying out the most fiendish and dastardly plan you could ever imagine!"  
  
Potter looked at him, and brushed wet hair away from his forehead. His scar seemed to gleam in the half-light of the overcast sky. "...What does he need the coconut for?"  
  
"I don't know. You don't point out to the _Dark Lord_ that he's gone round the flipping _bend_."  
  
There was an amused chuckle, and Potter seemed to say something that sounded awfully like ' _so_ never going to fuck you' before he pointed his wand at Malfoy and immobility wound its way up Draco's body with a carefully chosen string of Latin.  
  
He saunted off past Draco, whistling off key and out of tune, leaving him to rot there as he saved the day. _Typical,_ thought Draco, _fucking story of my life_ , and then it began to rain even harder.


End file.
